Freight Broker Software Blog

Within the recent court ruling in "Schramm V. Foster" the court said that a brokerage company was required to use "due diligence" in selecting a carrier. It is now more important than ever that you qualify your carriers prior to tendering them a load or you may be held liable along with the carrier.

"Due diligence" as applied by this ruling, requires each brokerage company to establish a corporate policy on qualifying carriers and always follow this policy before tendering to a carrier.

The following should be considered when establishing your policy:

• Create a file for each carrier.
• Include in this file a copy of the carrier’s operating authority and insurance filings with the FMCSA, along with the carrier’s insurance certificates.
• Check the FMCSA safety rating and include in the file.
• Do not use a carrier if their safety rating is "unsatisfactory".
• If the safety rating is "conditional" or there is no safety rating at all, develop a program to check the carrier yourself. Always follow this policy before tendering a load.
• Every carrier file must be kept current with any information received and should be review when appropriate. A monitoring process should be employed for this purpose.

A freight brokerage software system should include a way to establish a carrier file easily (preferably in electronic format to save time and money) and provide a monitoring process to know when it is time to update the carrier file with new insurance certificates and check their FMCSA file again.

TruckMaster Logistics Systems, Inc. has both the carrier file with electronic document storage and the carrier monitoring process which will not allow you to book a load on a carrier with expired qualifications.

You can't afford to ignore this court ruling, and I encourage all brokerage companies to stay current on this issue.

Craig Sorensen
TruckMaster Solution Provider
TruckMaster Your Freight Brokerage™